284 Burgesses, paid L5 5 0 each…………….L1,302 0 0
Yearly Expenses since.
L s. d.
House-rent and taxes ……. 23 6 6
Servant at 6s. per week, … 15 12 0
board wages
Ditto, yearly wages …….. 8 8 0
Coals, &c. …………….. 10 0 0
Ale tickets ……………. 40 0 0
Half the members' plate …. 25 0 0
Swearing young burgesses … 10 0 0
Subscription to the …….. 5 5 0
Infirmary
Ditto Clergymen's widows … 2 2 0
Ringers ……………….. 4 4 0
————- 86 11 0
—————
One year ………… 143 17 6
Multiplied by years . 6
————— 863 5 0
Total expense of six years' parliament, exclusive of expense incurred during the time of election, and your own annual expenses…………………….. L2,165 5 0
The followers of the Coalition had been defeated in almost all directions, and it was computed that no less than 160 of them had been left upon the field,—with no other consolation than what their own wit afforded them, in the title which they bestowed upon themselves of "Fox's Martyrs."
This reduction in the ranks of his enemies, at the very commencement of his career, left an open space for the youthful minister, which was most favorable to the free display of his energies. He had, indeed, been indebted, throughout the whole struggle, full as much to a lucky concurrence of circumstances as to his talents and name for the supremacy to which he so rapidly rose. All the other eminent persons of the day had either deeply entangled themselves in party ties, or taken the gloss off their reputations by some unsuccessful or unpopular measures; and as he was the only man independent enough of the House of Commons to be employed by the King as a weapon against it, so was he the only one sufficiently untried in public life, to be able to draw unlimitedly on the confidence of the people, and array them, as he did, in all the enthusiasm of ignorance, on his side. Without these two advantages, which he owed to his youth and inexperience, even loftier talents than his would have fallen far short of his triumph.
The financial affairs of the country, which the war had considerably deranged, and which none of the ministries that ensued felt sure enough of themselves to attend to, were, of course, among the first and most anxious objects of his administration; and the wisdom of the measures which he brought forward for their amelioration was not only candidly acknowledged by his opponents at the time, but forms at present the least disputable ground, upon which his claim to reputation as a finance-minister rests. Having found, on his accession to power, an annual deficiency of several millions in the revenue, he, in the course of two years, raised the income of the country so high as to afford a surplus for the establishment of his Sinking Fund. Nor did his merit lie only in the mere increase of income, but in the generally sound principles of the taxation by which he accomplished it, in the improvements introduced into the collection of the revenue, and the reform effected in the offices connected with it, by the simplification of the mode of keeping public accounts.
Though Mr. Sheridan delivered his opinion upon many of the taxes proposed, his objections were rather to the details than the general object of the measures; and it may be reckoned, indeed, a part of the good fortune of the minister, that the financial department of Opposition at this time was not assumed by any more adventurous calculator, who might have perplexed him, at least by ingenious cavils, however he might have failed to defeat him by argument. As it was, he had the field almost entirely to himself; for Sheridan, though acute, was not industrious enough to be formidable, and Mr. Fox, from a struggle, perhaps, between candor and party-feeling, absented himself almost entirely from the discussion of the new taxes. [Footnote: "He had absented himself," he said, "upon principle; that, though he might not be able to approve of the measures which had been adopted, he did not at the same time think himself authorized to condemn them, or to give them opposition, unless he had been ready to suggest others less distressing to the subject."—Speech on Navy Bills, &c. &c.]
The only questions, in which the angry spirit of the late conflict still survived, were the Westminster Scrutiny and Mr. Pitt's East India Bill. The conduct of the minister in the former transaction showed that his victory had not brought with it those generous feelings towards the vanquished, which, in the higher order of minds, follows as naturally as the calm after a tempest. There must, indeed, have been something peculiarly harsh and unjust in the proceedings against his great rival on this occasion, which could induce so many of the friends of the minister—then in the fulness of his popularity and power—to leave him in a minority and vote against the continuance of the Scrutiny. To this persecution, however, we are indebted for a speech of Mr. Fox, which is (as he, himself, in his opening, pronounced it would be) one of his best and noblest; and which is reported, too, with such evident fidelity, as well as spirit, that we seem to hear, while we read, the "Demosthenem ipsum" uttering it.
Sheridan had, it appears, written a letter, about this time, to his brother Charles, in which, after expressing the feelings of himself and his brother Whigs, at the late unconstitutional victory over their party, he added, "But you are all so void of principle, in Ireland, that you cannot enter into our situation." Charles Sheridan, who, in the late changes, had not thought it necessary to pay his principles the compliment of sacrificing his place to them, considered himself, of course, as included in this stigma; and the defence of time-serving politics which he has set up in his answer, if not so eloquent as that of the great Roman man master of this art in his letter to Lentulus, is, at least, as self-conscious and labored, and betrays altogether a feeling but too worthy of the political meridian from which it issued.